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Macdonald not my mate: White Energy chair

Adam Bennett

The chairman of a major mining company linked to a tainted exploration licence in the NSW Bylong Valley has denied contacting his "mate" - former resources minister Ian Macdonald - over concerns about how the tenement had been awarded.

White Energy Company chair Travers Duncan denied he was good friends with Mr Macdonald, despite counsel assisting the inquiry, Geoffrey Watson SC, producing a slew of emails showing the pair met regularly over lunch and dinner while he was a minister.

Mr Duncan appeared briefly at the end of Thursday's hearings before the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC), which is investigating whether Mr Macdonald rigged the tender process for the coal-rich Mount Penny tenement.

His decision is alleged to have benefited former Labor colleague Eddie Obeid, his family and associates to the tune of tens of millions of dollars.

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White Energy made a failed $500 million bid for the eventual winner of the tender, Cascade Coal, of which Mr Duncan was a shareholder and stood to make $60 million if the sale had not fallen through, the ICAC has heard.

Mr Watson asked the businessman whether he had contacted "a mate" in the Department of Primary Industries at the time the bid ran into trouble, particularly when media began reporting links between Cascade and Mr Obeid.

Mr Duncan denied knowing anybody he would consider a "mate" in the department - but a recording of a March 17, 2011, conversation with White Energy managing director and fellow Cascade shareholder John Kinghorn appeared to contradict that claim.

"I have asked a mate of mine in the department and he said the file is totally clean. It's not like NuCoal where the officers recommended the minister not do it," Mr Duncan is heard telling his colleague in the recording, played to the hearing by Mr Watson.

"It's got probity and everything on all of it."

Despite being asked repeatedly to name his contact, Mr Duncan said he did not have a "mate" in the department and had lied to Mr Kinghorn to big-note himself.

"I have no explanation for it, except folly," he said.

Accusing him of lying to the commission, Mr Watson said: "Can I just suggest to you that you did have somebody, somebody who you knew well enough to approach, somebody who could look at the file for you, and that somebody's name was Ian Macdonald.

"No," Mr Duncan said.

"I didn't speak to ... Ian Macdonald on that matter that I can recall at all."

Referring to email evidence of meetings between the pair, including a Kevin 07 election dinner, Mr Watson said: "There is a fair bit of contact between you and Ian Macdonald at this time, isn't there?"

"It's purely business," Mr Duncan replied.

The ICAC also heard that the Obeid family's 25 per cent stake in Cascade Coal had been hidden through a campaign of "sanitisation" by the company.

James McGuigan, the son of Cascade shareholder and White Energy director John McGuigan, admitted he had helped conceal the Obeids' involvement because it would have raised questions about the Mount Penny tender.

"I might have a dirty mind, but I'm thinking - NSW parliamentarian, who's a friend of Ian Macdonald, owns a farm, also buys into the joint venture. It doesn't sound right, does it?" Mr Watson asked.

"... you would have had a view, wouldn't you, that the Obeid involvement meant that the tenement could have been obtained corruptly?"